It fits! It fits!!

What do you do 24 hours before going on an Epic Journey?

Well, that depends on whether you are already extremely prepared, or whether you panicked a few days/weeks ago and ended up with two new bikes.  Both drop handlebars (Sid’s Genesis Croix de Fer from Evans and Doris’s Triban R520 from Decathlon) and neither what you might call super-comfortable for an Epic Journey.

Even the addition of two Robillard Racing stickers didn’t seem to have sorted things out.

So today, Ben Hallam at Primo Cycles in Cambridge agreed to do us a last-minute fitting to make them better suited to our taut, lean, muscled (out of condition, saggy, hunched, nervous) cycle bodies.  And very impressive it was too.

He has software and cameras and – above all – knowledge of cycling bodies that just boggled us.  We sat there cycling with 4 different cameras on us and the data was reassembled into a movie of a skeleton with a hunched back, rocking pelvis, slanted in knees, and Chris Froome-style elbows (at last! I have something in common with Chris Froome – or at least my skeleton has). Ben looked at the data, inspected the wear patterns in my cycle shoe insoles, suggested accurately where I hurt when I cycled and then put in place a combination of smaller handlebars, shoe inserts, repositioned cleats, and COMPLETELY repositioned saddle.

And some other combination of stuff for Sid – shorter stem, new lower saddle, repositioned handlebars and some more shoe work.

So after that, we are completely confident that this is as good as it is going to be.  The nature of an Epic Journey is that our bodies will hurt at some points – the good news is that this is the least it could hurt.

Shameless additional plug: Ben Hallam, Primo Cycles, Cambridge.